Relatively easy, but expensive, problem to solve. We have all the salt water you need. Build nuclear plants and desalinate.
Stop allowing them to use the Colorado River.
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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I'm pretty sure desalinization doesn't scale. The salt needs to go somewhere.
And it takes a lot of energy
it scales fine (roughly linear at large scale), people just don't want to pay the energy cost because they think farms need cheap water.
Where would the salt go?
brine evaporation ponds
Where does the salt go after the water evaporates from the brine? You can't just dump it back in the ocean, the concentration destroys wildlife.
Landfill? Salt deserts? It's gotta go somewhere.
Sell it for cheap to barbecue houses
Sea salt as a food additive would get cheaper probably.
last I checked salt mining is still an industry
seawater is not all saltwater, its a bunch of other chemicals in it too.
Sparking concerns. A-ha. Right. I could have asked why this shit is not banned for this reason alone, but sadly I know the answer
I hope you're all morally consistent and don't eat beef, which requires 15,000 litres of fresh water per kilo.
threeduck, you should stop eating beef.
For all the harm that this current AI craze has caused with its excessive power usage, I don’t get how water usage is a thing. I’ve been in many data centers with water cooled systems and they were all closed loop systems. The water was a heat transport mechanism. The weren’t using fresh water to gather the heat and then just dumping it on the ground. So how is this a problem?
They pump it out of aquifers then when done it goes down the drain to be processed and inevitably evaporated. The problem is we are pumping it out faster than it can naturally the aquifers. This causes long term environmental damage and at some point the aquifer will fail and no longer regenerate.
Welcome to the water wars.
Many of the AI/LLM focused DCs are using open loop systems. It's stupid as fuck but, it's cheap (as a large corporation).
Yeah I’ve been reading up on this and it’s just stupidly wasteful.
Loss? They consume it?
https://tube.blahaj.zone/w/qEcczobJGVGmBe2rbWJkMN
There is air cooled water chillers and water cooled water chillers. Depending on what the companies go with they could have water cooled chillers causing the water loss. Air cooled chillers don't really have that problem because they don't have the same cooling situation. I attached a video of a water cooled chiller
on a more positive note, I like the article thumbnail and how its not flat corporate artstyle art and reminds me of the designs of yesteryear
Don’t worry, I’ll stop using my swamp cooler this summer